12.08.2022 • 4 mins read

IT Managed Services

What are IT Managed Services? You may be looking at outsourcing your IT support, IT management and IT Security in whole or in part, the specific scope will depend on many different factors and will vary from company to company based on what you need and what services are on offer. Generally speaking IT Managed Services or IT Support simply refers to outsourcing some portion, or all, of your IT services and technology management to an external service provider. Essentially this means employing an external company to become your IT department.

This can include:

IT support
IT management
ICT support and management
Platform management
Infrastructure management
End user support
On site support
Cloud support
Server and network management and support
Data centre support
Cybersecurity

The list is not exhaustive and and has variations of all of the above examples and more which will need to be tailored, but essentially it is a service provided to run, manage, maintain and support your technology platforms. Some companies keep these functions in house in the IT department, others decide to fully or partially outsource their IT management to a service provider. It is important to look at the range of IT services required by your company or industry and choose an IT service provider who has the necessary skills and flexibility to tailor an IT service to your needs.

Why Outsource IT?

There are many reasons why a company may choose to outsource some or all of their global IT operations to an IT service provider. In the case of SME sized companies it can simply be that they have no in house IT department or skills, and they have grown to a size whereby they need more support to properly run their platforms. The cost and complexity of hiring an IT team in house is often not worth it with a poor ROI so the decision is made to outsource to an IT Managed Services company.

This can be a wise decision in the case of the SME with say 10 to 100 employees. Even if they took the decision (as some do) to hire an IT support technician to sit in their office, they will find themselves constrained by the skill sets and availability of what is often a junior hire, mainly tasked with end user support.

A more effective solution therefore may be to hire the services of a professional IT support company who brings a wide range of available skills, monitoring solutions and best practice IT management processes to your environment. Contrary to popular belief, this need not be prohibitively expensive and can often be similar to or less than the costs of hiring your own junior IT support people who have many more limitations both in skills and availability than an IT support company could provide.

IT Offshore Outsourcing

Other reasons for IT offshore outsourcing can be to provide levels of support to regional offices in different countries and time zones to the HQ where most or all of the IT team may be situated. This is a common model employed by PTS since we cover Hong Kong, China and the broader APAC region with our IT Managed Services and IT support. Many of our clients are international companies from the US , UK, Australia and other countries who also have Hong Kong and China operations but do not have IT services available to their offices in region. We effectively become their in regional IT department working in partnership with the client IT teams based in their headquarters.

This model of IT offshore outsourcing has proven to be very effective for western MNC companies outside of the region to provide a comprehensive level of global IT support to their colleagues which is available in region, in time zone and in local language.

PTS is also ISO20000 certified for IT Service Management, we are committed to providing outstanding levels of professionalism and service to all of our clients across the region.

If you need help or advice related to this topic please get in touch with us here